The last of the October spook-lets is up, although you will discover there is no 27 October.
Was that day? Did it actually happen? I have no memory of missing a day. Did I cease existing then? Was there insufficient belief in me?
I’m going to go eat some tiny chocolate bars rather than ponder further.
That sounds a lot more impressive than “next-to-final week,” right?
A note of explanation for those reliant on alt text under the pictures; there’s an eighth image without alt text, which concerns a small icon which added itself to the final entry this week. That thing doesn’t appear in the alt text, so I’m boring you with it here rather than there.
As mentioned yesterday, the first group of #VSSMURDER stories are ready for gandering at. Those whose browsers don’t like pictures will be pleased to hear that the alt text for each screen shot contains the whole text.
Guess what, everyone? I’m not doing the same thing for October as I did last year!
2020 is proving to be the year I have trouble scraping words out of my head. It’s not the fell Writer’s Block, as there is production, but it’s halting. I made the same conscious decision about trying to knock thirty-one stories this year as I have made about NaNoWriMo every year. Better to not offer disappointment.
However… the words are trickling out, and apart from the story under construction at the moment, I do have the necessary juice to produce Twitter-length material. There just happens to be a daily prompt for the month of fun, and so far I haven’t missed on (quality may vary, no guarantees offered, caveat lector).
What I’m going to do is present these in a clump each Saturday. Tomorrow’s clump will be a little above weight, but it’s Thanksgiving weekend here in Canada, and that’s the best time to be over-weight.
…or something to that effect.
The final group will appear on The Great Day itself, which would normally be tactically unwise, but this year all sensible people are not going to be out partying, and probably not even dealing with swarms of kids on the doorstep.
Also, I have some good news which I’ve already unboxed on my other blog, but which I’m waiting for a couple of details to firm up before I shout about it here. I leave it to you whether you want to click that sidebar link or save it for a surprise.
There you are, then. Warnings of impending fate delivered. Back into the crypt with me…
The last couple of years, I’ve offered a Hallowe’en treat of true ghost stories. This year I find I can’t do that, because despite keeping an eye open, I haven’t seen any more ghosts, ghostly activity, or even things that with a bit of a stretch might be interpreted as such.
I was on the edge of telling a story of the worst scare I ever got as a kid (and which I will likely present next year about this time, unless something obligingly rattles a chain at me in the interim) when slowly-collapsing memory a non-ghostly event which still counts as eerie. When I first told it, I would describe it with only some irony as Fortean, and I think that’s still a good broad label for it– some weird junk that happened, for which I have no ready explanation.
It is not hair-raising, alas, but it is unsettling. Might it happen again? What’s behind it? Who can say?
Of course, by now your main question is likely just what is it? Well, turn the page and examine the Hallowe’en mystery of The Fire Over Yonder… if you dare.
I’m sure you dare. Here’s Vincent Price to encourage you:
In honor of the best event the calendar year offers, I’m posting another little look at my own interactions with the misty realms of which we know but dimly, with an explanation of Why I Believe in Ghosts. Like last year’s excursion, the most startling thing about the whole affair is the title of this announcement post. Also like last year’s post, this is not to say that there aren’t chills to be had from reading it… if you consider the broader and ongoing implications of true ghost stories.
Hyperbole sure is easy!
For Hallowe’en, I thought I would offer a small recounting of a ghostly encounter of my very own. Like a proper real-life ghost story, it does not have a very firm narrative line, and it also doesn’t have much that a dedicated sceptic can’t dismiss out of hand.
There also isn’t, at least on the part of the teller, horror. My hair remained unwhitened. My flesh barely crept at all. But there is a lingering sense of having something happen which, dismissive sceptics be damned, satisfies Occam’s razor most readily by saying, “It was a ghost.” Which, for someone who enjoys writing this sort of story, is kind of neat.
Dirck de Lint's Missives from the Living Skies 